Ark

[Zhil]

The whole dinosaur thing started a few years before Jurassic Park, I think the first JP was already a culmination of the generational hype. Not sure, but I think Land Before Time was part of the start (that movie was huge here, maybe even bigger than JP), which was released in '88, 4 years before Barney ('92) and JP ('93). I mean, they made like a gazillion of those Land Before Time movies (the first one is the only good one though). By the time Spielberg jumped on the bandwagon, kids around here were already overflowing in plastic toy dinosaurs, which were probably the real catalyst for the whole thing.

But yeah, in any case, I was the kind of kid that loves ancient history trapped in a generation that was overflowing with dinosaurs. Add to that the fact that I never grew up (still refuse to, dammit!) and you get an adult that still gets that glint in his eyes whenever he sees a properly realized dinosaur. It was only a question of waiting before games appeared that properly gave scale to these beasts and this is the very first game where I can feel them around me.

I'm just not sure if I like that you can tame all of the dinosaurs. I'm noticing that once I tame one and use it as a pet, they quickly lose that special feeling. Maybe they should've just made a selection tameable and only a few of those ridable. Riding the Spinosaur is just ridiculous really.

As far as I can see, we can already do scale, but we can't do AI just yet (we can fake it pretty good, but that doesn't scale well, as with the point rotating brontos in ark). There's just a few pieces of the puzzle missing to get a truly great dinosaur game (you notice how foliage, never mind feathers, is still a sore point too). That reminds me, I still have to try out theHunter: Primal. That game is by more established developers and way more tame in scope, maybe that's a better benchmark for what the industry can really pull off. To those of you that don't know about theHunter: Primal, don't buy it expecting a full game. This is one of those quick iteration spinoff titles, where you pay half of full price for a quarter of a game, hence why I don't own it yet. The devs were given a really short time (3 months for release, another 2 for final polish) and seemed to have fared well, but there's a lot of rough edges, judging from reviews and forums.

[FlowerChild]

The whole dinosaur thing started a few years before Jurassic Park, I think the first JP was already a culmination of the generational hype. Not sure, but I think Land Before Time was part of the start (that movie was huge here, maybe even bigger than JP), which was released in '88

Consider me schooled. I never saw any of the Land Before Time movies and even had to look it up on imdb to remind myself of what it was. When I think back to that time things like Blade Runner, The Road Warrior, and Heavy Metal come to mind as more the kind of thing I was into :)

[Dralnalak]

There was also the 1974 television show "Land of the Lost", though I watched a lot of it in reruns. Dinosaurs, Sleestak (lizard-men), and cave men.

I won't claim it was good television, unless you're a kid. But I'm sure it had to do with part of my love of dinosaurs growing up.

They remade it in the early 1990s, but I don't know that I ever saw that version of the show.

[FlowerChild]

There was also the 1974 television show "Land of the Lost", though I watched a lot of it in reruns. Dinosaurs, Sleestak (lizard-men), and cave men.

Yeah, I specifically mentioned that one in my previous post about one of the reasons why Dinosaurs seemed like B-movie cheese to the previous generation of game devs ;)

[Zhil]

Consider me schooled. I never saw any of the Land Before Time movies and even had to look it up on imdb to remind myself of what it was. When I think back to that time things like Blade Runner, The Road Warrior, and Heavy Metal come to mind as more the kind of thing I was into :)

If you haven't seen it yet, it might be worth a watch, not sure. I'll have to watch it again myself. From what I remember it's pretty grim and post-apocalyptic. They show actual dinosaurs dead or dying in tar pits IIRC.

It's about a rag-tag bunch of young dinosaurs that end up in the middle of a mass extinction. There's a lot of racial hate going on, but they have to band together to struggle their way through a post-apocalyptic landscape in search for the promised land.

Not sure how watchable it is for adults though.

EDIT: I think this was also influential, also '88, it's got cyborg dinosaurs as epic mounts. This was promotion for a toy line, so yeah, I think toy dinosaurs were the real catalyst of the whole generation.

[FlowerChild]

I felt obliged to remind myself, so if anyone wants to get an idea of what people my age tended to think of dinosaur fiction, just watch the first couple of minutes of this:



I think you'll immediately see the problem there. Not that the 70's were exactly known for high culture, but that kind of thing made Star Trek, the Dukes of Hazard and even John Travolta look classy by comparison :)

EDIT: I think this was also influential, also '88, it's got cyborg dinosaurs as epic mounts. This was promotion for a toy line, so yeah, I think toy dinosaurs were the real catalyst of the whole generation.

Thinking back, there was also the whole Tranformers thing with the dinobots as well.

[Zhil]

By the way, I stand corrected too, I said that Spielberg jumped on the bandwagon, but Land before Time was a joint Spielberg/Lucas venture.

EDIT: Oh, and here is what generation Dino buys their friends when they turn 30. Bought this for the other half of Lesbi&semen (my industrial band).

[FlowerChild]

By the way, I stand corrected too, I said that Spielberg jumped on the bandwagon, but Land before Time was a joint Spielberg/Lucas venture.

I think Jurassic Park was also the first time where dinosaurs were really presented in a cool way for adults too, so I think he definitely deserves credit for that. Technology finally got to the point where they could be rendered in a manner that was more terrifying than comical.

I remember when it came out I insisted on sitting in the front row of the theater for additional sense of scale :)

I think games are *starting* to get to that point as well considering the "crap my pants" moments I've felt in Ark, funkiness with the Brontosaurus aside. I meant to mention with your previous post that I think that's more of an animation problem rather than an AI one by the way, but I see what you mean in terms of the AI essentially needing to drive a segmented "train" of parts rather than just a single entity, without getting tangled up and looking goofy, so I guess it's really a combination of the two. I suspect the cross disciplinary nature of the problem might be why it hasn't been better resolved yet.

[Zhil]

I think games are *starting* to get to that point as well considering the "crap my pants" moments I've felt in Ark, funkiness with the Brontosaurus aside. I meant to mention with your previous post that I think that's more of an animation problem rather than an AI one by the way, but I see what you mean in terms of the AI essentially needing to drive a segmented "train" of parts rather than just a single entity, without getting tangled up and looking goofy, so I guess it's really a combination of the two. I suspect the cross disciplinary nature of the problem might be why it hasn't been better resolved yet.

Yeah, you caught my drift. It's basically procedural animation, something we can actually handle in pretty complex ways in 2D (where volume is an entirely faked deal). I think it can already be useful in 3D in small doses, but then when you try to scale up, it'd probably look even more silly than the point rotate. Not to mention that the added CPU use to calculate procedural animations for a lifelike animal trying to navigate terrain is probably substantial. Good looking procedural animation is all about weight probably. Simulating not just weighted bones, but weighted bones affected by gravity. Calculating how to distribute weight in an animal in such a way that distribution looks correct.

Anyway, this is all just conjecture, based on the idea that if it were possible, we'd already've seen hints of it appear in games instead of total absense.

For Ark, a better solution would probably be a new sidestep rotate animation, which is cheap and probably fixes the rotation issue (if that is actually an issue that needs solving of course, it's minor, though immersion breaking).

[FlowerChild]

For Ark, a better solution would probably be a new sidestep rotate animation, which is cheap and probably fixes the rotation issue (if that is actually an issue that needs solving of course, it's minor, though immersion breaking).

While as you know, I'm not at all a graphics focused individual, I do think it's rather important in this particular case, and would likely be the kind of thing I'd focus on if I were working on that project.

The sense of scale is such an important part of this game IMO, that I'd do everything I could to try and make it look good for the very largest of creatures. There's a huge "oh wow" that comes with first seeing a brontosaurus in this game, that rapidly dissipates into an "ewww...that looks bad" as you watch it move around :)

[Zhil]

Yeah, I AM a graphics person, so I usually err on the side of caution as I tend to completely overthink and over-engineer the graphics beyond the point of actually being useful.

Another thing that does really bother me in Ark is the AI not being able to navigate around trees properly. It's just silly to see a huge massive triceratops stuck between a pebble and a stick tree. Not only is it hugely immersion breaking, it allows the player to tame these massive beasts right from the get-go.

A final immersion breaker is the rocks, I don't feel like making them break up was a good decision, immersion or game-play wise. It looks extremely silly to see a huge rock system fall apart when hit by a small rock pickaxe and game-play wise, it can be hard to figure out which rocks can be harvested, resulting in the player inadvertently knocking down the cliff-face that was part of their base.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I hear you on that one. Also makes it way too easy to hunt certain animals (like that grey mammalian thing) once you realize you can just run them into a cliff-face or rock formation and they'll stay stuck to it while you hack them to death. I think it would be awesome if they came charging right at you if they wound up trapped, but that is of course the kind of thing you'd expect to get refined with further development.

My other objection so far was the addition of that ape they just put in recently. Definitely got an "ewe" out of me when it was suddenly added to my world mid game, and started to give me that cheesy "Land Of The Lost" vibe :)

[Dralnalak]

The sense of scale is such an important part of this game IMO, that I'd do everything I could to try and make it look good for the very largest of creatures. There's a huge "oh wow" that comes with first seeing a brontosaurus in this game, that rapidly dissipates into an "ewww...that looks bad" as you watch it move around :)

The first time I saw a brontosaurus moving towards me, I was thinking, "Oh, crap!", and ran to get out of its way.

The first time I saw a brontosaurus walk towards my freshly built grass shack, I was thinking, "No! No! No!", and trying to figure out how to deflect it. Then the brontosaurus stepped daintily on the roof of the grass shack with one leg and turned to walk in a different direction, which completely destroyed me fear of the brontosaurus.

Ark did at least make the brontosaurus' leg bend properly and shift when it stepped on the roof as if it were standing on something solid, and I accept the fact that letting a wandering brontosaurus destroy everything just by stepping on it would upset some players, but watching the destruction fail to happen was more disappointing to me than the actual loss of the grass hut would have been.

Still, I did get some awesome screenshots out of it.

[DaveYanakov]

It seems to me that larger stuff like brontosaurs would benefit from separating the legs from the animal and making them individual entities tied to a fifth body entity. It would be tricky to get up and running but could be easier and therefore less manhour intensive than trying to remove point rotation from the equation and allow for doing some interesting things with design like having individual feet trample structures rather than trying to do so with an entire hitbox; or being able to bolo individual legs with a trap and getting different behaviors based on how they get tangled. Then again it could be an absolute nightmare to code in the first place. Either way I hope they figure out a way to fix an immersion issue of that size.

As for dinocamp, the transition period of the 80s may have culminated in Jurassic Park and the Land Before Time but before that, it gave us things like the Dinosaucers. Even counting the Land of the Lost I don't think you can beat that one for absurdity. I fall into the camp of liking dinosaurs well enough but not being automatically enthused by them so much as what they bring to the table for gameplay or storytelling. Looking back at the Saturday morning media of my childhood and comparing it to the experience of those who gre up in the previous decade I'm starting to thing that the way they were presented is mostly responsible. Back when I was reading mostly accurate facts about Stegosaurs out of books I thought they were the greatest things ever.

[Wgurgh]

In case anybody was interested in the game but not sure, wanted to mention that Steam has it free to play for the weekend right now.

[DerAlex]

In case anybody was interested in the game but not sure, wanted to mention that Steam has it free to play for the weekend right now.

I'm tempted, thanks for the heads up!

How easy is it to play with 1 and only 1 other guy? Do I need to set up a dedicated server or is there a way to play P2P?

[Dralnalak]

How easy is it to play with 1 and only 1 other guy? Do I need to set up a dedicated server or is there a way to play P2P?

There is a mode where you can host the game as you're playing it, allowing (I think) four people to join you. From what I have read, you need a reasonably solid computer to be the host since you are processing your game and the other players' dinosaur AI and other server stuff as well. Unless the developers have changed it in the past month, there was also a limit to how far the other players can move from the hosting player; this is to prevent the game from simulating too much and dragging down the computer.

It is sort of a compromise between single player and having a dedicated host that can handle all the server-side processing for a large group of people. Since the hosting computer still needs processing power and memory to handle all the "client" aspects such as rendering the game, they have to balance how much of that hosting computer's resources are allocated to the other players.

[Psion]

I tried playing the game, but with only 512mb video card and 6 gigs of ram, i couldn't get it to run even at the lowest setting except once. ; ; and that time it was incredibly laggy until i lowered everything to lowest settings, at which point it looked like the original tomb raider with dinosaurs. even then i kept getting random freezes every few minutes. Tried the fixes i could find online to make it run smoother and couldn't get it to load at all at that point, would always freeze my entire computer trying to load the world, even at the extremely low memory play option. This then resulted in me engaging in an epic battle trying to ctrl + alt + delete my computer back, and spending the next 10 minutes waiting for a response. gave up after the fourth time.

Rather disappointed. I know my computer's dated, but I'm able to play final fantasy XIV at max settings easily with firefox running and even minecraft at the same time without issues. I can't believe a game that looks 10000x worse than FF14 on lowest settings runs so terribly. I didn't even think such a poor optimization was possible. D:

[Zhil]

Rather disappointed. I know my computer's dated, but I'm able to play final fantasy XIV at max settings easily with firefox running and even minecraft at the same time without issues. I can't believe a game that looks 10000x worse than FF14 on lowest settings runs so terribly. I didn't even think such a poor optimization was possible. D:

I have 1GB VRAM, 6GB RAM, i7 920 and an SSD and the game will run decent on lower settings (with several settings on highest). It's a heavy next-gen game, and you compare it to a 5 year old game. Ark on max settings looks a million times better and is made to be run that way, it doesn't just scale down well, but few games do, even when they're optimized. Is it silly that games these days use way more resources to look as pretty as a game from years ago? Well, sure, but why would they spend time optimizing it for old computers? For decent next-gen games, a minimum requirement of 1GB VRAM is very common and I expect it won't be that long before games start being optimized for way more than that.

[FlowerChild]

In particular, I don't think I've ever seen a game with such dense vegetation, especially done as full models rather than just billboards (with some pretty cool physics applied to them no less), and there's no scaling that given pretty much every bit of it can be interacted with and given that I assume that density is a key element in multiplayer in terms of remaining hidden (hiding behind a bush in a PvP environment that other players may not even be seeing = suck). That's a metric shit-ton of pollies to be pushing around, which I can assure you the original Womb Raider did not have :)

It runs like total crap on my system, but I don't think I once felt like faulting the developers for that during play. Throw "it's an alpha" on top of that and I see no problem at all with the game's performance for this stage of development.

[Ethinolicbob]

Well they are working on getting it DX12 ready which will help those who have access to it.
The optimisation done in DX12 basically allows ~10x objects for the same memory costs which is really fantastic for those on dated systems.

[Zhil]

I think the foliage might be a bit too ambitious to ever get to run well, except on the systems that it already runs well on. They might need to think about creating a version with way less foliage. They can probably use lower-poly models, which might be reusable as LODs, as well as find a way to reduce foliage, while still keeping the overall lush look similar. As we are dealing with purely visual objects (most of the foliage is not interactable and plays no game-play role), it should also be possible to offer this as an option.

The trade-off is that you're now developing two different games visually, so it basically takes resources away from making the game even better for those people that can already run it. So, the question is: are they reaching a wide enough audience with the current model? If the answer is yes, there's no need to cut a big part of your development budget in trying to reach that universal audience. Some games, like, say, Crysis, just aren't made to be run with low-level systems. Saying that all games should is just another example of stupid entitlement.

It's also a great example of why user feedback is stupid. I've seen a number of "feature requests" saying: "can we please have an option in the menu to reduce foliage". Like I said above, it's probably the most expensive feature they can ask for, budget wise (more expansive than adding a bunch of friggin' dinosaurs). Part of the reason of why it is the most expensive feature to ask for is that the solution requires cutting into the scale of the game and as we mentioned a few posts back, scale is probably one of the major selling points of the game.

[belthize]

Glad to see you taking a look at Ark. I agree with the vague sense of dissatisfaction with the leveling system early on. The intended progression for thatch, wood, stone, metal makes some sense but I think they missed the boat. For solo play and PvE there's no real point in metal, dinos can't hurt stone and metal is painful to make. Ditto for thatch which is really just an early XP grinding bonus.

I'd personally prefer a system where thatch slows down things like raptors just enough for you to run away or pray, wood slows down raptors enough for you to kill them and slows down carnos/rexs enough to run away, stone slows down everything but can be destroyed and metal is more of an end game safety. I'd also prefer a system where there was no level gating, just make all the construction engrams cost 1 point and available at L1 but change the material costs to something like:

Thatch: 70% thatch, 20% wood, 10% fiber
Wood: 75% wood, 20% thatch, 5% leather (instead of fiber)
Stone: 70% stone, 15% wood, 10% thatch, 5% cement paste (e.g. 2 paste)
Metal: 75% Metal, 15% cement paste, 10% polymer (for lack of a better material)

So the natural gating had less to do with your level and more to do with your progression and ability to obtain leather, then chitin then metal/polymer.

The whole system suggests more of a gated progression through actual accomplishment than some XP system. They've done well with it and I'm sure it will get re-balanced multiple times but in the end it will still be an XP system.

[Zhil]

I'm not sure I agree. I might've done it that way too, but the current XP system is interesting too and I applaud some variety in the genre. The combination of XP/death punishment is actually quite fun to play.

[FlowerChild]

dinos can't hurt stone and metal is painful to make.

Hehe...I really wish I had known that before an alpha raptor decided to wipe out all my livestock and demolish a good portion of my base. This was before I tamed ManBirdLizard, but luckily I had enough Dodo eggs stockpiled to train him fully with kibble (was base level 20, and I got +9 levels out of the taming process).

That may inspire me to go back at some point and upgrade my base from wood to stone. I never really bothered with anything beyond wood as having a tougher base didn't seem to serve much purpose in single player.

As an aside: alpha raptors are rather insane. I've managed to take down a Tyranasaur (already wounded one mind you) at one point, but that alpha raptor was nigh unkillable, and I only managed to take him out with some cheesy hiding in various parts of my partially demolished base that he was having problems pathing to while stabbing at him ad nauseum with a pilum. I've also dumped a ton of my level up bonuses in melee damage, so I'm not weak on the stabby stabby either.

I think I've been killed by alpha raptors somewhere upwards of 10 times or so, which is probably more than all my other deaths combined :P